Culture Challenge of the Week: Contempt for Stay-at-Home Moms

It took some pressure, but Hilary Rosen finally apologized. The Democrat strategist displayed a tin ear to women’s concerns when she snidely remarked that Ann Romney—mother of five and wife of presidential contender Mitch Romney--had “never worked a day in her life.”

President Obama sought to defuse the negative impact of Rosen’s remarks only by expressing dismay, through his campaign manager, that Rosen’s criticism breached the unwritten rule that presidential candidate’s family members should be “off-limits.” Michele Obama straddled the issue with her every mom’s-a-winner tweet ("Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected…”).

Meanwhile, liberal attack dogs kept barking, using the occasion to escalate their rhetoric. Actress Roseanne Barr, for example, mocked Ann Romney’s defenders, saying, “After the Republicans had alienated at least half the voting public by all but condemning birth control, suddenly Rosen’s remark enabled them to self-righteously assume the role of defenders of American motherhood.” And Terry O’Neill, President of the National Organization of Women, reinterpreted Hilary Rosen’s remark as an insight that, as a stay-at-home mom, Ann Romney lacked “the kind of life experience and if not, the imagination, to really understand what most American families are going through.”

Moms, do you get the feeling the left hasn’t a clue about the value of motherhood? That down deep, they believe that it’s a “career” that’s not worth much because it’s not salaried? Or that full-time motherhood is a refuge for women who, as Bill Maher said (more crudely and contemptuously), won’t trouble themselves to get out the door in the morning?